Food Fight
by OuEstLaCraie
Summary: All's fair in love and war...and lunch.  Snickers oneshot.  Reviews loved.


**_Author's Note: Just a little oneshot I wrote a while ago, and never got around to typing up and posting. Enjoy : )_**

**Disclaimer: Don't own 'em, never will.

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**Nick glanced down the conference room table to where Sara sat, scarfing down a lunch special from one Chinese food restaurant or other. He glanced at the signature white container and raised an eyebrow at its contents: brown rice (a perfectly normal staple of Chinese takeout), some kind of long, flat peapod he'd seen before but couldn't quite remember the name of, and thin white strips that bore an unsettling resemblance to either oversized maggots or albino earthworms. Grissom would be in heaven.

Nick looked down at his own lunch, appraising the meatball sub from the pizzeria down the street, and deemed it a perfectly respectable, appetizing lunch. Raising a finger in Sara's direction, he asked, "And what, exactly, is that?"

Sara lifted her eyes from a case file she'd been poring over in silence and met Nick's gaze. Smiling, she lifted a forkful of rice and white worms and replied cheekily, "Lunch."

Nick cringed visibly, and Sara suppressed a laugh at the irony: a crime scene investigator, who spent his days swabbing up bodily fluids, gore, and guts, couldn't handle a glance at a vegetarian meal. "But what's on the menu?" he asked. "Gris' latest catch?"

Sara sighed heavily at his ignorance. "It's bean sprouts and snow peas," she explained patiently, jabbing at a peapod and noting that Nick's years in the fraternity had obviously damaged several million brain cells.

"It's nasty, is what it is."

Sara set down her plastic fork, narrowing her eyes at Nick. Oh, yes. Several _billion_ brain cells must have been lost in those four short college years. "And eating bits of ground-up cow isn't?"

"Nope." He grinned widely at her and ripped off a hunk of his sub sandwich with his teeth, to demonstrate just how un-nasty it was.

"I hope you get Mad Cow Disease," she snapped in jest, a glint in her eye giving away her insincerity, as Nick waved his sandwich at her.

"C'mon, you know you want some..."

"Of course I don't. I'm a vegetarian, Nick. Do I have to explain that to you? _Again_?"

Ignoring the jab, he enticed in a singsong, "It's delicious..."

"It's murder," she shot back, making a face. "Just imagine if your only purpose in life, in some people's eyes, was to grow up to be mashed up into Chicken McNuggets."

"Yeah? And what's so great about vegetables?"

Sara raised an eyebrow. The casualties of the frat house were steadily rising. "You're kidding me, right?"

"What I mean is...well, you can get sick from vegetables. Really sick." He smiled smugly. "Two words for ya: _E. Coli._"

She smirked. "Five bucks if you can tell me what the 'E' in _E. Coli_ stands for..."

He paused, cursed himself for not remembering, and then continued the argument, side-stepping her challenge ungracefully with, "Vegetables come from dirt."

Sara held back laughter to reply, "You're acting like you're five years old."

He made a face at her, swallowing another bite of meatballs and Italian bread. "You're entitled to your opinions." He sat back in his chair, setting the sandwich down to wipe his hands on a napkin, while Sara returned to her reading, assuming they'd agreed to disagree. This was just a petty argument over eating habits, after all, not a difference in opinion over a case.

After a few minutes, Nick picked up what was left of his sub and slid down a few chairs, settling in next to Sara. She gave him a fleeting sideways glance before returning to her work.

"Ten bucks is you swap lunches with me."

She snapped her head around to glare at Nick, who grinned in return, obviously enjoying tormenting her. "No way," she told him.

"Aw, c'mon, Sara...try a bite of this, and I'll try yours."

"Watching you suffer through my meal, though entertaining, is _not_ worth giving up my beliefs over."

Nick sat back in his chair a moment, brooding. He loved their bantering and bickering, but it seemed this argument was coming to a close. So, he reached out a hand and snatched a bean sprout (_Maggot_, he thought to himself fleetingly, and then pushed the thought away before he gagged) out of Sara's dish. She turned slightly to watch him smell it, poke it, and study it closely.

"Are you going to eat it or process it?" she quipped with a half-smile.

He glanced at her. "Gimme a minute." He considered the sprout again, then tossed it in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed.

"Well...?"

"All right, all right, it's not bad. You win this round. But next time..." He gave a small, devilish smile. "You're eating something _I _like if I have to shove it down your throat."

"I'd like to see you try," she shot back, a small smile playing on her lips, before turning back to the case file. They fell into a comfortable silence, eating and thinking.

Suddenly, Nick asked, "Hey, Sara, what's you favorite restaurant?"

"Why?" she asked, immediately suspicious.

"Because I was thinking I'd like to take you out to dinner sometime."

A large forkful of peapods and rice missed her mouth by a mile. "Really?"

"Sure." He smiled. "I'll even get whatever you get."

"No meat?"

"Guess not."

She chuckled. "I'd like to see that."

"Good, then we're in agreement. How about tonight?"

"Tonight?" she echoed.

He nodded. "You pick the time and place, and I'll swing by and pick you up."

She turned to face him again, so that they were face to face. "You're serious about this, aren't you?"

He shrugged. "Wouldn't have mentioned it otherwise."

She studied his face a moment and slowly began to nod. "I'll call you later," she relented.

"Sounds good."

They finished their respective lunches in silence, each equally repulsed by what the other was forcing down his or her throat. Eventually, they were both done, Nick polishing off his sub and crumpling the paper it had been wrapped in, while Sara scraped the last of her rice out of the plastic takeout container. She rose from her seat, dumped everything in the trash, and then returned to the table to collect her file.

Glancing at Nick, who tossed the greasy wax paper from hand to hand, she leaned over to grab the folder and informed him, "You are so screwed."

Nick sighed wearily, just imagining the vegetarian concoctions Sara was already planning on ordering for him later on. "Yeah...yeah, I know." He gave Sara a small smile as she muttered a farewell and turned to leave the room. "But Sara..."

She paused at the door and turned back around, expectant.

Nick got to his feet, tossing the crumpled wrappings in the trash and coming to stand at his friend's side, smiling. "There's no one else I'd rather dine with. No one else in the world."

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**_Reviews loved : )_**


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